“Design with the Other 90%: Cities,” the second in a series of themed exhibitions by Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum that demonstrate how design can address the world’s most critical issues, opens October 15 at the United Nations and runs through January 9, 2012. — bustler.net

In 1972, Massimo Vignelli designed a diagrammatic map for the New York City subway. It was a radical departure. He replaced the serpentine maze of geographically accurate train routes with simple, bold bands of color that turned at 45- and 90-degree angles. [...] Its abstract representation of the routes was elegant but flawed. To make the map function effectively, a few geographic liberties were taken, something that didn’t sit well with New Yorkers. — tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com

A complex scale model of Tokyo is on view by appointment at Tokyo's Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills. The model was built in 2003 by 30 Mori employees over approximately 17 months. All streets and buildings were photographed at street level and from above via helicopter. They were then adjusted in Photoshop and glued to polystyrene models. — thepolisblog.org

Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have camped out in a square near Wall Street since Sept. 17, 2011, as part of a campaign dubbed "Occupy Wall Street." — Democracy Now @ Youtube

All in all — despite a pretty obvious blind spot in Hustwit's thinking about cities like Los Angeles — "Urbanized" ranks among the smartest recent analyses of mass global urbanization and its discontents. Think of it as a cinematic version of "The Endless City," the book that Ricky Burdett (who plays a significant role in "Urbanized") and Deyan Sudjic put out three years ago. — articles.latimes.com

Imagine a city like Los Angeles disappearing from the map completely. That's exactly what happened to Chaohu, a city in eastern China's Anhui province with a similar population — about 4 million. The people have remained, but the city has vanished in an administrative sleight of hand. — npr.org

Google is committed to providing our users with the richest, most up-to-date maps possible. [...] In this case, the edit for the 9/11 memorial site was made by a map maker user on Sept 12, 2011. — New York Observer

Piranha was commissioned by Silverstein Properties to create a short film depicting the completion of The New World Trade Center site. Piranha wrote, produced, art directed, filmed, and finished all vfx for this inspiring piece marking the 10th year anniversary of 9/11. — Vimeo

Welcome to Miami – a city where civic advocacy and forward thinking can land you in jail if you’re not careful. Friday’s TransitMiami Park(ing) Day 2011 was a huge success; hundreds of visitors came out throughout the day to enjoy downtown Miami’s newest temporary pop-up park. Working in collaboration with the Miami Parking Authority, we transformed 10 on-street parking spaces into a tree-lined, shaded park, complete with moveable chairs, and a solar-powered mobile wifi hot... — transitmiami.com

Park(ing) Day is an international celebration of alternative street design, which started in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Now it's a worldwide phenomenon, and today New Yorkers will transform more than 30 boring parking spots into temporary parks. — gothamist.com

Dadaab is now the third-largest city in Kenya, but there are no Kenyans living there. Instead, it is home to 450,000 Somalis in a camp that was built for 90,000 people. Refugees like Nuriya are not permitted to leave the camp, because the Kenyan government wants them to remain refugees and not become illegal immigrants. The government also prohibits them from working. — Der Spiegel

In a movement propelled by environmental concern, nostalgia for a simpler life and a dollop of marketing savvy, developers are increasingly laying out their cul-de-sacs around organic farms, cattle ranches, vineyards and other agricultural ventures. — Wall Street Journal

No other place in the world has such a fantastic collection of underecognized and underappreciated vertical architecture as in Los Angeles. In a city of mostly low-density avenues and sprawling suburban tracts, no other street in L.A. contains as many of these Modernicus Erectus as Wilshire Boulevard. — Urban Operations

We present a system called CityEngine which is capable of modeling a complete city using a comparatively small set of statistical and geographical input data and is highly controllable by the user. — oldurbanist.blogspot.com